How To Make A Skirted Pedestal Sink-Easy Sewing Tutorial

Edited on 6-26-15- This tutorial received a nice mention on the Today Show website by writer, Julie Pennell! The article is called, “Living in a Rental? 5 Ways to Upgrade the Bathroom.” Read the full post here. 🙂

I have been working on our downstairs powder room for a few months now. I have shared on Instagram and my Facebook page some of the things I’ve been planning, or items I’ve found to add to the space. I know it probably seems like a long, drawn out project, but the truth is, I want it to be really special. Those of you that follow me, thanks for all your kind words and patience. It’s truth~design is a process! 

So my design inspiration for this formerly sage green (faux painted!) powder room looked like this (I tagged sources for it on my Instagram page):

This was the direction I was headed after painting the walls Urbane Bronze by Sherwin Williams. I wanted the space to be moody and dramatic, not too modern or masculine, while staying true to the rest of the cottage/Country French style of our home. My hubby has already installed the antique brass faucet, I’m still working on a few gallery walls, and have made a gathered skirt for the pedestal sink.

Today, I want to share with you how I made an unlined linen skirt for the sink with my basic sewing knowledge. I had pinned quite a few skirted table and sink covers on my Pinterest sewing/no sew page, but couldn’t find an easy detailed tutorial for making a gathered pedestal sink skirt. I thought it through for a while, and then remembered a technique an employee at a sewing shop taught me for gathering fabric that seemed easy enough. All that I really had to do besides that was measure the sink’s width/circumference and height and hem the top and bottom of the skirt, so I decided it was worth a try. I chose a washable lightweight linen blend fabric, but keep in mind that linen and natural fabrics wrinkle easily.If that would drive you batty, you may want to choose a different fabric. For the relaxed elegant look I wanted, that was fine with me. 

How To Make a Skirted Pedestal Sink

Supplies you will need:

• Fabric
• Hem ruler
• Pins
• Sewing Scissors
• Seam ripper (optional, but good to have for mess ups!)
• Twine
• Industrial strength with sticky adhesive or regular velcro, male & female parts ( 2 inch) You will need the amount of the width/circumference of your sink and finished skirt.
• Iron
• Thread in color that matches fabric
• Sewing machine with top thread and bobbin threaded and ready to go

Steps:

Measure your sink’s width/circumference from wall to wall (like you are measuring a circle) 

For a full, gathered skirt, tripling the width/circumference is a good rule of thumb. For example, my sink measured 60″ from wall to wall, so I multiplied 60 x 3 = 180. Then divide 180/36 ( inches in a yard ) and that will give you 5 yards of fabric. I made a mistake ( surprise, surprise…most of my sewing tutorials have a few of those- HA!) and only doubled the amount the first time, so I had to buy more fabric, sew a seam of the new yard of fabric, and blah, blah, etc. So, I will just tell you up front to triple the amount, if you want to make this gathered Country French style skirt. 

 Measure the height of the sink from the top edge to the floor. Mine measured 34.” You will need a 1-inch finished top hem and a 2-inch finished hem for the bottom hem, so allow 3 inches for those. 34″ + 3″=37″ for the length.

Pin both sides of the unfinished fabric for a hem of about 1/4- 1/2 inch and sew. They will be facing the walls and gathered, but a finished edge looks much nicer. You should now have the length and width of the fabric cut to size and the sides hemmed before hemming the top and bottom. 

Here’s what doubling a gathered skirt looks like. After I saw how skimpy it looked, I knew that I didn’t want that, so I went back to buy another yard of linen! Another “Live & Learn” moment brought to you by The Painted Chandelier.  Seriously though, one thing I have learned in all the DIY that I’ve done over the years is never settle if you don’t love it. You would rather have good, quality work that took a little longer than something you are stuck with and don’t love. 

I learned about this Velcro product years ago when I made a bedskirt from Traci at Beneath My Heart’s burlap dust ruffle tutorial. It was perfect for this project! 

You could also use regular velcro if you want to sew it to the fabric instead of using this kind with adhesive, but you will need the adhesive female part ( soft loop side) for the sink edge, unless you want to hot glue a non-sticky type. I’ve found that sewing the sticky adhesive on with your sewing machine messes up the needle and makes it thump. 

Here’s a before shot of the sink:

And a few shots with the female side of the velcro ( the soft fuzzy side) taped to the edge of the sink: ( if it wrinkles a little, that’s ok…it’s sort of difficult to get it perfectly smooth )

If you’re using linen or another natural fiber fabric, here’s a good tip to cut a straight line with it: 

Make a small cut, then find a string in the fabric. Pull the string gently, and gather the fabric until you see a line form in the fabric. Cut using this line as your guide! It works great on burlap, too.

Lay your fabric out and cut it to the proper width and length of your skirt, allowing a 1-inch hem for the top of the skirt, and a 2-inch hem for the bottom (a double fold hem ).

Using a hem ruler, measure a 1-inch hem and pin it. Tip: Make sure you pin your pins facing up on the short side of the fabric so you can pull them out as you sew. 

Sew the top edge hem with short side of the fabric under the presser foot and the pins facing up.

Measure a 1-inch hem on the bottom hem and pin. Next, you will iron that hem. ( and remove pins)

Lay the full piece of fabric out again and make another 1-inch hem by folding over the existing 1-inch bottom hem that you just ironed. Measure carefully so your finished length will be correct. This is called a double fold hem and it gives the finished skirt a nice weight and appearance. My sweet Mom told me how to do this! ( Y’all might remember I haven’t had any formal sewing classes, but have sort of picked up things from various sewing sites on the Internet and from my Mom, who used to sew alot when I was younger 🙂 If I can do it, so can you…pretty much learning your sewing machine is the hardest part, IMO! )

So at this point, you should have a 1-inch top hem and a 2-inch double fold hem, right? Here’s when the fabulous gathering trick I learned comes in! God bless the sweet lady at the sewing counter at Hobby Lobby that shared this with me a few years ago.

My fabric has a seam sewn into the middle to join the extra yard I had to add. Since I didn’t take pictures of how to seam those pieces together for this tutorial, just ignore that. ( and buy enough fabric the first time 😉 ) You can see some twine running the length of the fabric. Unravel the twine as you go the length of your fabric, leaving about 4 inches hanging off the fabric ( you need a little extra at either end ) 

Pin the twine in place on the back side of the fabric ( where the raw edge of the hem was sewn ). The twine is not supposed to show from the front- It will make sense in a minute! 

Set your sewing machine on the zigzag stitch on the longest and widest stitch as pictured here:

I have a Singer machine, so the big 3 that you see first is the zigzag stitch, and the other 2 numbers are the length and width. Basically, you want the highest number for the zigzag stitch as your machine has. This will cause the stitch to be loose for the next step. You do not backstitch at the beginning or end as you do when you’re trying to secure the thread in place for regular sewing.

Holding the twine in place, zigzag on top of the twine the entire length of the fabric. The pins help hold it, but they don’t really stay in place, so just sort of hold the twine as you go. The zigzag stitch goes back and forth across the top of the twine.

And here is what it should look like after you have finished: 

Knot the end of the twine ( the excess 4 inches that I mentioned previously )

Iron the fabric really well and use steam if you’re using linen. I probably should’ve used some spray starch to stiffen the fabric a little, but I wanted more of a casual rustic elegant look. ( again, there is a seam in my fabric that you won’t have if you buy enough fabric- triple the circumference/width of the sink 😉 ) 

After you have ironed your fabric, start at one end of the top hem where the twine is, and start sliding and scrunching the fabric to form gathers.

You will be working from one edge to the center, and then start on the other end and work towards the center. There will be places like pictured below that seem hard to get to, but just keep moving and pulling/gathering the fabric. 

Lay your gathered fabric down again and measure it. You want the length to be the actual width/circumference of the sink. If it isn’t, adjust by spreading the gathers out so that it becomes the desired width. 

Take the male part of the velcro ( the hard or rough side) and stick it to the back of the gathered hem area at the top of the fabric and trim any excess. Attach to female velcro around sink edge and arrange gathers. Once you are happy with the way it looks, you can knot the end of the twine closer to the edge so that you don’t have the excess, and then cut after the knot. (This will be facing the wall edge anyway)

And here is the gathered pedestal skirted sink after: 

I found an old antique brass bucket that I’m going to use as a wastebasket in this powder room. It’s just the right size for this small space and adds a nice rustic touch. I may try to polish it with Brasso, but I’m sort of loving it in its current state! And yep, I gotta do something about these old tile floors, too……

So what do you think about the twine gathering technique for a skirted sink? Pretty easy, huh?! There are other techniques to create gathers, but since I’m still a novice sewing girl, I really like this one. Let me know if you have any questions and if you make one, please share it with me via a photo at mimirobinso@gmail.com. I would LOVE to see and might share yours on one of my social media sites.

I will be sharing the rest of this room in a few weeks, and would love to tell you more about it. To see more of my daily projects and happenings, please follow me on Instagram, Pinterest, or Facebook! 

Til next time, Friends! Have a great one! xoxo